NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. – The Consumers Association of Canada is cooling its support of farmer and chemical industry efforts to improve rules governing pesticide registration and availability.
Association vice-president Jenny Hillard said that while the industry has been getting some of the improvements it wants, such as more access to minor-use chemicals, consumers have not been making similar gains in areas such as a more transparent and open registration system.
“We’re getting sick of not getting the things we want,” Hillard said during the annual meeting of the Crop Protection Institute of Canada.
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What it wants is new pesticide regulation legislation, long promised by the government but still not introduced in Parliament.
Hillard said that since farmers and manufacturers have been achieving some of their goals through regulatory change, their enthusiasm for new legislation has waned.
“We’re saying that if they don’t support us in our goals, we will not be there to support them when they ask for something,” Hillard said in an interview.
“For us, new legislation is crucial, but I don’t see a lot of support from them on that.”
The issue arose when southern Ontario vegetable grower Jeff Wilson complained that a new variety of pest was destroying his broccoli crop this fall, but he couldn’t get access to the chemical that would save the crop.
CPIC president Lorne Hepworth said the industry, the government and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency have more work to do in trying to devise a minor-use chemical policy that works for farmers.
At that point, Hillard said the answer is new legislation and not more regulatory tinkering.
She said in an interview that consumer lobbyists are frustrated by how the issue has unfolded.
A decade ago, after a regulatory review of rules governing pesticides, the consumers association supported proposals to speed up the registration process, share data with American regulators, and make it easier for farmers to get access to minor-use chemicals that have not been approved in Canada.
“We supported farmers’ positions because we thought they were right and sensible,” Hillard said. “It was controversial. We were at odds with other groups, including the environmentalists.”
In return, the consumer lobby asked for new legislation that made more information available, made the registration system more “transparent” to the public and reduced companies’ ability to keep the process secretive for commercial confidentiality reasons.
Hillard said the government “cherry picked” the recommendations, giving the farm and chemical industry some of what it wanted, but little to the consumer side.
“The original process was a textbook case of good consultation,” Hillard said. “Not having it acted on has eroded a lot of our confidence in the sincerity of the consultation process.”
Now, she said, the appearance of new legislation probably depends on whether it would help or hinder health minister Allan Rock’s unannounced Liberal leadership campaign.
“I just don’t know if we’ll see something because it is so caught up now in the politics of the Liberal party.”
